“The Lord only knows!”
“Great snakes!––it would be all right if it weren’t for that last clause. Didn’t you read it? ‘Prompt settlement on due dates to be the essence of the agreement.’ Couldn’t you see that the property reverts to Dalton immediately you fail to make any one payment on the dates agreed?”
Jim laughed in a woe-begone way.
“Ay!––Dalton put one over on me that time, all right. But it’s the very last. Can’t stand for this happening again. It hurts, right on my professional dignity. Won’t he have the haw-haw on me?
“Ah, well! What’s done can’t be undone. ‘My deed’s upon my head.’”
“Gosh, but he’s a rotter,” growled Phil. “Put a thing like that over on a drunken man!”
“Hush! Not drunk, Phil;––call it indisposed! You know I am an æsthete on these matters.
“But wasn’t it some bait though, Phil?”
“Oh, great stuff all right! The ranch must be worth six or seven thousand dollars. But a fat chance you had of ever getting it. Why, he had you every way you 243 turned. All you did was to give him a present of nine horses worth five hundred dollars.”
“He’ll never get his spuds back, that’s one blessing.”